ortho sx community vs acedemic

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corona 247

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I am trying to get a picture of the typical case load of a orthopod.

What types of bread and butter cases would your typical general ortho surgeon do in a your average community hospital versus academic hospital?

Thanks

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This depends on more your location and trauma level rather than academic vs community. In the bigger highly congested cities, no matter if you're doing academic or comm, you'll get less high energy trauma, even if you're at a level 1. In less congested cities, and in the midwest, and a place like seattle or dc, you can get all of the high energy trauma you'll ever want. As long as you're at a level 1, you'll get the big traumas.

For a place that gets lots of high energy trauma, some bigger cases you'll get are the multiple level spines, multiple extremity, acetabular fractures, and traumatic amputations (mostly fingers). In places (like the east coast), you'll get much less of the acetablular and multiple extremities, but will still get the fingers and spines. At level 2's you'll probably get less acetabular fractures and complicated spine cases, but will still get a broad overview of bread and butter cases in every field.

Now ortho isn't all trauma. You can get as much joints, sports, hand, foot and ankle as you want at academic vs community, depending upon each program's focus. Stuff like shoulder and complicated hand are more likely to be found at academic institutions. Most professional and sports athletes are seen at academic institutions, but community programs have probably comparable relative volume.

If you want numbers of total cases for residents at the end of training, its highly variable. Some programs I rotated at told me their residents operate more than everyone else and when asked, they told me the get 900-1300 cases in their 5 years. Other programs have between 1600-1800, and other, including mine, have 2000+ cases average. I don't know what the best number is...does 2000+ mean I am going to be an awesome surgeon because of my experience, or does it mean that I will be a work horse for the department with no educational value after my 100th total knee with no time to study, I don't know yet.

I hope this helps answer some of your question.
 
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